The northbound lanes of the James River Bridge reopened Saturday evening ahead of what was to be a weekend-long closure.

The northbound lanes of the bridge that connects Isle of Wight County with Newport News had closed at 9 p.m. on Friday, March 7, to facilitate repairs to the steel grid deck that spans the drawbridge. The Virginia Department of Transportation had anticipated the closure lasting through 5 a.m. on Monday, March 10, but said in a March 8 news release that both northbound lanes had reopened as of 5:20 p.m. that day.

The southbound lanes remained open for the duration of the work, which according to VDOT spokeswoman Brittany McBrice Nichols, had focused on replacing one of the steel panels in the grid deck. That deck, she previously told the Times, is designed to distribute traffic loads across the bridge’s structural supports. Marine traffic also wasn’t affected.

During what proved only a 20-hour closure, northbound traffic was detoured through Suffolk across the Godwin Bridge to the I-664 interchange and the Monitor Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel.

The James River Bridge previously saw multi-day closures last year from Jan. 12-15 and from Feb. 2-5 to facilitate the replacement of 80 2-inch-thick wire cables original to the 41-year-old drawbridge. 

McBride said that while some other maintenance was addressed during the 2024 closures, this particular grid deck panel was not in need of repair at the time, which is why the work wasn’t completed last year. The issue with the steel grid deck panel developed several months after the ropes replacement project and was identified during a recent inspection, she said.